Christ Lutheran Vail is a community of followers of Jesus Christ, committed to live by faith, to be known by love, and to be a voice of hope. We welcome people from all walks of life, wherever they are in their spiritual journey.

Jul 13, 2008

If a picture paints a thousand words...

There are 39 books in the Old Testament. The New Testament contains 27. If you have studied the Bible then you might remember this little trick. 3 x 9 = 27. It's a good way to remember the number of books. When these two numbers are added together it provides the total number of books in the Bible. 66. For those who like trivia, the total number of words is 138,020. This calculates to about 2100 words per book on average.

On my nightstand, I have the novel, Night of the Hawk by Dale Brown I estimate that this book has about 175,000 words. If I spend about one or two hours a night, I can read a good novel in about a week. If it's a good author, I can devour a novel in a day. Some of my favorite authors are David Baldacci, Dean Koontz, Robert Ludlum, and Alistair McClain. I love action and suspense.

Not too many people have read the Bible all the way through like a novel. As we go through the Book of Acts, I want to read through the book once a week. It takes about an hour. Anyone want to take this Acts Challenge with me?

I have been thinking about the Bible lately because I am beginning to unpack some of my books. My brother in law has just move to St. Louis to enter the seminary and I want to give him some of my text books. I have about 50 boxes of books. Each box probably contains about 25 books. That means I have about 1250 books. If I read one book a week, it would take about twenty-five years to read them all. And trust me... few of these books read like David Baldacci.

Imagine how many books a library has. The Concordia Seminary Library in St. Louis is contains 245,000 books. Project Gutenburg is an online repository of electronic books that are mostly in the public domain. This website claims to have over 100,000 books available through its online partners and affiliates. They hope to have over one million titles available soon. Let's see at one book per week it would take 20,000 years to read them all. I know what I'll be doing in heaven.

But think about how the message of the gospel has multiplied. First, Jesus comes to earth and walks around for three years. His story is recorded in four gospels. Luke adds the second book about the early church and then Paul and others write a few letters. From this event more has been written, discussed argued and preached than any other event in history.

Yet among all the writings and theology and books, the message is simple. It's John 3:16. Jesus overcame death for you.